palliate
to ease the severity of something without curing it
Word origin: From Latin palliare, to cloak, from pallium, a cloak.
Palliate in a sentence
Here are example sentences showing palliate in a sentence.
The medication could only palliate her symptoms, not cure the disease.
The medication could only palliate the patient's symptoms, since no treatment addressed the underlying disease.
Using “palliate” well
Palliate means to ease the severity of something without removing its cause, as in palliative care that relieves suffering rather than curing illness. A second sense is to make a fault seem less serious by excusing it.
More GRE words starting with P
to calm or soothe someone who is angry or agitated
a song or expression of joyful praise or triumph
done with careful and thorough effort
agreeable to the taste or acceptable to the mind
resembling a palace in size or grandeur
rebirth, regeneration, or renewal into a new existence
pale or lacking vitality and color
so intense as to be almost touchable or readily perceived
Questions about “palliate”
See these words the way the GRE tests them.
Definitions in isolation do not stick. Sit a free, full-length GRE mock and meet this vocabulary inside real text completion and sentence equivalence questions, with your score and a worked solution for every answer.